More great news about where I grew up.
Not only did I live in this area, but I WENT TO THIS SCHOOL FOR NINE YEARS OF MY LIFE and lived less than five miles away for eighteen.
The really ironic thing is that some people back in Ohio think I’m putting my life in danger by breathing Los Angeles smog every day. Ohio has one of the highest cancer death rates of any state in the nation. California has one of the lowest. We’ve got our environmental problems here, but we typically don’t elect presidents that “relax” pollution regulations, even right up until they are booted out, either.
But don’t take my word for it, just ask this liberal media biased news organization.
by the way, I loved this: “kids at elementary schools can also be exposed by playing in the dirt,”
Most of what I remember from elementary school was playing in the dirt. I broke my arm playing in that dirt. I have old photos of myself and my best friend playing in that dirt. I have memories of often shielding myself from breathing in that dirt when we’d play kickball in gym class on the dirt baseball field. I remember scraping my knees, my hands, my elbows and probably even my head in that dirt.
“but they’re overreacting, the toxicity levels are low, this is just an Obama scare tactic to pass cap and trade”
Yes, lets err on the side of pollution, that always works out to everyone’s advantage. I’m glad we listened to the cigarette company execs instead of the scientific studies. Just think of all the poor workers at Marlboro that would have lost their jobs! You know I’m sure it costs more to put airbags in cars, lets get rid of those, surely that money could be someone’s salary, right? All that testing they have to do at the local water plant to make sure you’re not drinking a big glass of lead and poop… gotta have cost some jobs….
( in each of these examples you can see how the regulations created jobs as well…hint hint…)
The cap and trade naysayers also do little to argue with the fact that the American economy is turning (or turned, depending on who you ask) into a service economy, not a production one. Service businesses aren’t normally known to be high polluters. The much larger problem is the pollution from China’s production, and recycling of our waste (doesn’t anyone watch 60 minutesanymore?). But, to acknowledge that, we’d have to admit our own sins first, and nobody wants to do that (if it’ll affect shareholders).
Now, just to make this fair and balanced, I’d like to tell you about a regulation that gave me fits yesterday. On Tuesday night the smoke alarm in one of my bedrooms (not the one where I sleep, thank goodness) started to do its low battery chirp. Smoke detectors are usually placed either on the ceiling, or if the ceiling is inclined (as was the case here) on the wall no more than three feet down. I actually didn’t research to see if that is a regulated building code, or just a generally accepted practice, but research isn’t require to say that you’re “fair an balanced” so keep that in mind. All of the ceilings in my rooms but one are high ceilings. I don’t know how high, but my rough estimates with my tape measure put the detector up at around 14 feet. I had to borrow a huge folding ladder from the warehouse at work to get to the smoke alarm to change the battery, as even if I stood on top of my standard ladder I wouldn’t have been able to reach the thing with an outstretched hand. However, we had to try to sleep through the night with the thing chirping every thirty seconds first.
